


aggressive light

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s03e17 Pusher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 09:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10614177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Original post: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/153348216683/psssst-howsabout-fic-prompt-hug-like-just





	

**Author's Note:**

> Original post: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/153348216683/psssst-howsabout-fic-prompt-hug-like-just

It’s been an endless motion of push and pull, reciting the same story over and over again to multiple officials while Mulder avoided her eyes and spoke in a monotone. They got some strange looks when they claimed mind control yet again, but she thinks it was her steady confirmation of it that drove it home. (Imagine, Skeptical Debunker Agent Scully confirming one of Spooky Mulder’s theories.) “Yes,” she’d said again and again. “It was mind control. Modell used it on multiple people to drive them to harm themselves.” If the heart attack of Frank Burst, Holly kicking Skinner, and the man who set himself on fire didn’t convince her, what happened in the hospital did. She knows Mulder, knows he would never hurt her.

(They still haven’t told anyone what happened in that room. Not the specifics, anyway. She can never fully describe what it was like to see a gun to his head.)

Scully’s been telling herself that it’s okay, nothing happened, they’re both fine, as she writes up one last account of the events with Queequeg curled around her feet like a blanket. She waits by the phone for news of how Modell is faring in surgery, and nearly jumps out of her skin when the phone rings. “Scully,” she answers in what she hopes is a steady voice, fingers clutching the phone, knuckles whitening.

“Agent Scully, Robert Modell is out of surgery.”

“How is he?” she asks nervously. _What’s the range of his mind control? How do you stop someone like him, who _technically_ can’t be stopped?_ Her mind is flooded briefly with images of other things he could have planned for them, and she shivers. Her fingers creep closer to her gun.

“He’s in a coma. Undetermined for how long, but he’ll remain unconscious for the rest of his life,” the doctor says.

“Okay,” she breathes. (So there will be no more guns, no more barrels pointed at precious people, maybe in the dark of their apartment where no one can see or save them.) “Okay.”

She hangs up and tries to sleep. Queequeg crawls up to curl on her stomach, and she scratches his ears gratefully. The lamp’s aggressive light is annoying, but she doesn’t want to be alone in the dark. More than the gun pointed at her, she sees it pointed at him, bullet to the goddamn brain after everything they’ve been through. _Unfair, unfair, it’s so goddamn unfair…_

Scully grabs the phone from its spot on the coffee table, and dials Mulder’s number, counts the rings methodically as she stares at the TV without seeing or hearing any of it. It beeps through to voicemail. She dials again, tries to tell herself it means nothing. He doesn’t pick up.

“Damn it, Mulder,” she mutters, staring at the phone. He’d disappeared during one of the interviews, walking away from her down the hall. She’d called after him, and he hadn’t looked back. She’d resented him for leaving her. He hadn’t wanted to leave her after Pfaster and she’d let him; why couldn’t he stay for her?

She drives to his apartment and stabs his doorbell with one finger. 

Nothing happens.

Scully scowls at the peephole, and stabs the doorbell again. “Mulder, open the door,” she calls. “We need to talk.”

Only silence and the faint sounds of a sci-fi movie emit out from under the door. He’s either ignoring her or worse. Panic scrabbles around beneath her skin, and she pounds on the door with her palm. “Mulder, let me!” she shouts. “Don’t ignore me like this, you’re scaring me!” A door opens behind her, but she finds she doesn’t particularly care if she’s bothering the neighbors. She smacks the door so hard her palm stings. “Let me in, goddamnit!” 

The door swings open, revealing Mulder, looking weary and sleepless, with textbook circles under his eyes. He swallows. “What do you want, Scully?”

Her heart is beating normally now that she’s confirmed he’s okay. Her desperation seems almost silly now. “You wouldn’t answer your phone.”

He shrugs petulantly, not meeting her eyes. “So?”

“So you would’ve killed me if I’d done that to you,” she says. “After what we’ve been through.”

Mulder full-on grimaces at that, and she suddenly regrets her choice of words. _You would’ve killed me._ Damn it. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he says thickly.

He tries to close the door, but Scully sticks her foot in the way. “Too bad.” She’ll comfort him if that’s what he needs - hell, it’s one of the few times she wouldn’t mind it herself - but she has to get through to him first, break down this wall between them. She steps into the apartment, walking a few paces before turning to face him, arms crossed. 

Mulder slams the door. “So, what,” he says, staring determinedly at the floor. “What do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about how I almost killed you? Are you here to put me in my place?”

She stares incredulously. “I’m not _mad_ , Mulder.”

“You should be. After I put you in danger again. And this time, I would’ve been the one doing the killing. You should be mad, Scully.”

“You know what Modell does, Mulder. I know. I know it wasn’t your fault.” She touches his arm, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. She withdraws her fingers like from a hot stove. “I’m _not mad_ ,” she whispers, like that’s all she can manage. “I can’t… I can’t imagine what it was like for you, to… I know you didn’t want to.”

She’s hoping these are the words that’ll break through to him, but he just squares his shoulders, pushes her further away. “Maybe I should be mad, then,” he says quietly.

Annoyance prickles up her spine at this despite herself. She’s not mad, but she’s the only one who has a right to be. Why should he be mad at her, when it was his hand that almost took the both of them? “And why is that?” she snaps.

“You didn’t run.” Mulder blinks rapidly, as if holding back tears. “You wouldn’t save yourself.”

Oh. 

His breaths are shallow and sharp, and he won’t look at her. “Why wouldn’t you just run, Scully?” he croaks.

_Me not running saved you_ , she thinks irritably.

“I could’ve shot you. I _would’ve_ shot you, Scully. Why wouldn’t you run? Did you want to die?”

The sight of Mulder with a gun to his head, his hand steady, rushes back at her. “Did _you_ want to die?” she hisses. “You didn’t even try not to shoot at yourself!”

“I was being controlled,” he says slowly, as if he has to spell it out. As if she wouldn’t understand.

“You were being controlled with me, and you held back.”

“Scully, I couldn’t have stopped myself either time. I wouldn’t have been able to.” He still won’t look at her, still stares at the door like he’s watching for someone. “Why wouldn’t you just run?” he says again, his voice cracking.

Scully swallows. It had been too hot in that hospital room, the steady, medical breathing of the patient in the room and Mulder straining to say her name. “I didn’t want to die,” she says honestly, and this is the truth of it. She’d thought, _who’s going to feed the dog?_ She’d thought of her mother, losing both her daughters over the course of a year, and Bill, and even Charlie, who she hasn’t seen in years. She’d thought of Mulder, alive, or maybe dead, she didn’t know what Modell had planned, but alone, distraught because she would be someone else he could blame himself for - or maybe in prison, who knew if they’d believe he couldn’t help shooting her - but either way he’d be destroyed. There were, are too many things to miss. She hadn’t wanted to die.

Mulder turns to look at her, finally, eyes still wide and haunted. “Then why…” he starts, helpless.

Tears spring to her eyes, and she blinks furiously. “I couldn’t leave you.”

“God, Scully…” he whispers. She’s waiting for him to chastise her for putting his life above her own ( _he doesn’t think he’s worth anything, why, why_ ), but instead he just grimaces and says, “Fuck. It’s your birthday today.”

It’s the first fucking time he’s remembered her birthday in three years.

Somehow, this is what breaks her, and she steps closer to him and wraps her arms around him. He doesn’t move for a second, doesn’t move to touch her. She holds him tightly and buries her face against his shoulder. She’d expected to find him dead once the camera cut off, was steeling herself to find Mulder’s body, dead in some horrible self-inflicted way, or almost dead and she’d have to watch, be too late… she imagines the bullet meant for her tearing through his head again, and curls her fingers into the back of his shirt. “God, Mulder,” she whispers. “You could’ve died, too. And I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”

“Scully,” he whispers back. She can barely hear him. He hugs her back, briefly, almost like he’s afraid to touch her, and pulls away. 

She blinks up at him, holding back her own tears. “It’s all over now,” she says, suddenly remembering the phone call she received at her apartment. “Modell’s in a coma. I don’t think he has any hold over anyone from there.”

Mulder’s jaw clenches, and he nods. “I need to see,” he says. “Just so I can… know. For sure.”

“Okay,” she says. She’s been wanting to see for herself anyway.

She drives him to the hospital, and stops at the front desk to explain why they are there. He’s already gone by the time she’s finished. She finds him in the room, watching Modell, bandaged and unconscious on the bed. “Hey,” he half-mouths, half mutters as she enters.

“There’s no telling how long he’ll hang on, but he’ll never regain consciousness,” she explains.

“You know, we thought he was undergoing treatment. We were wrong,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Read his chart. The M.R.I.s were a way to gauge how much life he had left, but he consistently refused treatment. The tumor remained operable right up until the end, but he refused to have it removed.”

She stares at the shell of a man on the bed. She hates him. “Why?”

“I think it was like you said. He was always such a… little man. This was finally something that made him feel big.”

She is finished with Modell, finished with this entire ordeal. She looks down, reaches for his hand. His fingers clasp around hers almost desperately.

“I say we don’t let him take up another minute of our time,” Scully says.

She turns to leave the room and is briefly panicked when he doesn’t immediately follow. He steps out a moment later, and crushes her to him, arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, her face mashed awkwardly against his chest. Grateful for the contact, she shifts into a less awkward position, holding him back just as tightly. They drink in the other’s life, their pulse and warmth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hair. “I’m so sorry, Scully. I wouldn’t have… if I’d known… I didn’t think he’d be able to see.”

“See what?” she murmurs.

He swallows. “How much you mean to me.”

A lump is forming in her throat. _It would’ve gone the same way if our roles had been switched,_ she thinks. _You mean a lot to me, too._ They’re both victims, Modell saw right through them. She wants to tell him she feels the same way, but the words are caught in her throat. There seems to be too much risk of someone hearing.

They hold hands on the way out to the car.

 


End file.
